Elevator Story

by Jeff Baker

The two of us got on the elevator at the same time. The twenty-something with the brown hair in the suit and tie punched the button for Floor 34.

The doors closed and the two of us started up.

“Did you ever hear about Alfred Hitchcock’s elevator story?” I asked.

“No,” the guy said, probably not really interested.

“Oh, it’s really cool,” I said. “Hitchcock, the director you know, would get on an elevator like this, and he’d start in telling this story about finding somebody ‘with blood everywhere.’ And the other people on the elevator would look up, kind of startled, y’know.”

The guy looked over at me, interested.

“And Hitchcock would go on, you know, describing the scene,” I said. “And he’d say he asked the guy what happened. And he’d time it so that this would be about when he got to his floor and the doors would open and he’d walk out of the elevator leaving everyone hanging.”

The guy was this close to asking me something. But I went on.

“Anyway, one day when Hitchcock did that, one of his friends was with him and when they walked out of the elevator the friend asked Hitchcock what happened and Hitchcock said ‘Oh, that’s just my elevator story.’”

The guy and I both laughed and faced front again, still going up.

Behind him, I pulled the weapon out of my bag, swung with practiced ease, glad I worked out as much as I did and hit him on the perfect spot on the back of his head. He fell over and I struck him again and he started to bleed but not to move.

I put the weapon back in the plastic bag and pushed a floor button. This time none of the blood got on me, luckily. I put the bag back in my jacket pocket.

I waited until the elevator stopped and the doors opened.

I walked out of the elevator into the empty hallway, whistling that old Beatles song, wondering how Hitchcock’s elevator story would have ended.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: The story about Hitchcock’s elevator story is real. My story is made up. I was midway through writing it when I remembered about “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” —jeff